On Nov. 2, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that land strikes in Venezuela would require congressional approval. She said if Trump “authorized an activity on land, then it’s war, then (we need) Congress.”
Days later, Trump administration officials privately told members of Congress much the same thing — that they had no legal justification to support strikes against any ground targets in Venezuela.
Just two months later, however, the Trump administration has done what it previously indicated it could not.
It launched what Trump called a “large-scale strike against Venezuela” and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, to face charges. And he launched this regime change effort without congressional approval.
(Trump in November argued that he didn’t need congressional authorization for the land action, but that clearly wasn’t the consensus view in the administration.)
It appears that the mission is, for now, limited to removing Maduro. But, as Trump noted, it involved striking inside the country — the same circumstance that some in the administration had previously indicated required an authorization it did not have. CNN reported in early November that the administration had sought a new legal opinion from the Department of Justice for such strikes.
And Trump, in a news conference on Saturday, repeatedly talked about not just arresting Maduro, but also running Venezuela and taking over the oil — comments that could certainly be taken to suggest that there is more to it than just arresting Maduro.
The fire at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex, is seen from a distance after a series of explosions in Caracas on January 3, 2026. The United States military was behind a series of strikes against Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, on Saturday. – AFP/Getty Images
Legally dubious strikes inside another country—even those designed strictly to remove foreign leaders—are almost unheard of in recent American history. But even in this context, this one is remarkable.
Shifting justifications
That’s because the Trump administration has taken remarkably little care to provide a consistent set of justifications or a legal framework for the attack. And he doesn’t even appear to have notified Congress ahead of time, which is generally the bare minimum in such circumstances.
A full explanation of the purported justification has yet to be issued, but the early signs are characteristically confusing.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said shortly after the strikes that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told him the strike was necessary, in Lee’s words, to “protect and defend those who are executing the arrest warrant” against Maduro.
“This action likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect American personnel from actual or imminent attack,” said Lee, a frequent critic of unauthorized foreign military action.
A few hours later, Vice President JD Vance repeated that claim.
“And PSA to all who say this is ‘illegal’: Maduro has multiple charges in the United States for narco-terrorism,” Vance told X. “You can’t avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.”
At a later press conference, Rubio echoed the claim that the military supported “a law enforcement function.”
But there are many people living in other countries who are under indictment in the United States; it is not the usual course of the US government to launch strikes on foreign countries to bring them to justice.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro attends a civic-military rally in Caracas, Venezuela on November 25, 2025. – Jesus Vargas/Getty Images/File
Also, the administration had not previously indicated that military force could legally be used for this reason.
Trump initially threatened ground strikes inside Venezuela to target drug traffickers — despite the fact that Venezuela is a seemingly small player in the drug-trafficking game.
The administration later suggested that strikes might be necessary because Venezuela was sending bad people to the United States.
And then, after initially downplaying oil’s role in the U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuela and Maduro, Trump said he aims to recover “oil, land and other assets that they previously stole from us.”
The signals have been confusing enough that even hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina indicated in mid-December that the administration lacked “clarity” in its messaging.
“I want clarity right here,” Graham said. “President Trump says his days are numbered. That sounds to me like he’s got to go. If the goal is to get him out because he’s a threat to our country, then Say it. And what happens next? Don’t you think most people want to know that?”
Despite the focus on Saturday’s law enforcement operation, Trump said at the news conference that the United States will now participate in Venezuela’s leadership, at least temporarily. And he repeatedly talked about his oil.
“We’re going to rebuild the oil infrastructure,” Trump said, adding at another point, “We’re going to run the country right.”
And even if the administration had offered a more consistent justification, that doesn’t mean it would be a good one.
A controversial note from 1989
The most recent major example of the use of the US military for regime change is, of course, the Iraq War. That war was authorized by Congress in 2002. The broader war on terror was authorized by Congress in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.
Since then, administrations have sought to justify more military actions in the Middle East using these authorizations — sometimes dubiously. But Venezuela is in an entirely different theater.
While many have compared the effort in Venezuela to that in Iraq, the best comparison—and one the administration intends to make—is Panama in 1989.
As in Venezuela, Panama’s leader at the time, Manuel Noriega, was under indictment by the US, including for drug trafficking. And, as in Venezuela, the operation was less a full-scale war than a narrowly tailored effort to remove the leader from power.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 1980 concluded that the FBI did not have the authority to detain and abduct a foreign national to face justice. But the George HW Bush administration’s OLC quietly reversed that situation in the summer of 1989.
A memo written by William P. Barr, who would later become attorney general in that Bush administration and the first Trump administration, said a president has “inherent constitutional authority” to order the FBI to take people into custody in foreign countries, even if he violated international law to do so.
That memo was soon used to justify the operation to remove Noriega. (As it happens, Noriega was captured on the same day Maduro was: January 3, 1990.)
But that memo remains controversial to this day. It is also an extraordinarily broad authority that can allow US military force anywhere
Pedestrians walk past destroyed shipping containers in the port of La Guaira after explosions were heard in Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. – Matias Delacroix/AP
And the situation in Venezuela may differ in that it is a larger country that may prove more difficult to control with its leader in foreign custody. It also has significant oil wealth, which means other countries may be interested in what happens there. (China called the attack a “flagrant use of force against a sovereign state”).
In both the news conference and an interview with Fox News on Saturday morning, Trump raised the possibility of another military option, reinforcing that it could be more than just arresting Maduro.
It also means that questions about Trump’s legal authority could be tested again — as he has already been with his legally dubious crackdowns on alleged drug boats and other actions in the region.
What is clear is that Trump is trying to once again test the limits of his authority as president — and Americans’ tolerance for it. But this time he’s doing it on one of the biggest stages yet. And his law-breaking story is certainly not over.
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